Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday August 21, 2010 @01:06AM
from the here-be-drougeans dept.

mattclar writes "SpaceX just released footage and pictures of last week's Dragon parachute drop test. Using an Erickson Air-Crane, the Dragon capsule was carried to 14,000 feet, then released. After a few seconds of freefall, the drouge chutes appeared, followed by the main chutes. The test concluded with a gentle touchdown within the target area to conclude a test described by SpaceX as '100% successful.'"

That's just it; this specific technology is entirely concerned with the trip home from space - it doesn't appear to have any bearing on the cost of getting into space. The lifting technology is what will make it easier for us to build fancy stuff in orbit and beyond.

As a matter of fact I feel hard pressed to understand just what about this is actually a new development, but if people are working hard to overcome the obstacles then all the flashy bits that look good on the television are a lower priority.

Getting people home safely is part of getting repeat business for your trip into space business. But nobody EVER claimed anywhere that an astronaut has to survive his trip for it to count as a journey into space.

Or are you saying that if I die on my trip to Australia (and may god have mercy on my soul) I have never visited Australia? Would make the entry into heaven a bit easier but somehow I think it will still be held against me.

That's a poor analogy. A better one is this: if your plane takes off for Australia, but they haven't figured out how to land it yet and they just crash on landing, killing you and everyone else on board, does this really count as a successful flight?

There's not much that you can do to improve fundamental technology to go into space, but they can still try to make things as cheap and low-weight as possible. Every kilogram that you take off the re-entry system is another kilogram of useful payload that you can take up.

i don't know. IF at all possible the elevator might make it pretty cheap if combined with a huge orbital docking station where ships can actually be built. Eliminating the cost of liftoff and escaping the biggest part of the gravity well of earth might make a significant difference.
But, since we still have to go and impose our morals all over the world i'm afraid by the time we get out of the elevator we'll be welcomed by a nice young lady going 'ni hao':)

As if SpaceX is having a problem with getting stuff into space. If they were having some serious problems with getting that task accomplished, I would agree that this test would be a relatively non-issue...

But the vehicle for getting into space has already flown that this capsule is going to be sitting on top of. I should note here too that SpaceX has also announced with this test what the flight profile is going to be like for the next Falcon 9 flight:

During the Dragon's orbital shakedown later this year, the ship will cruise around Earth between one and three times, fire its Draco maneuvering thrusters and fall into the Pacific Ocean somewhere off the coast of Los Angeles near the Channel Islands.

The flight could last from less than two hours to five hours, depending on SpaceX's final decision on its duration.

This drop test was mainly to test the parachute system and to establish the recovery procedures for when this next flight is going to happen that will make it to orbit. Rather than using an entire Air Carrier task force from the U.S. Navy (how the Apollo and Gemini capsules were recovered), SpaceX is using a fleet of three boats that are all about the size of the S.S. Minnow from Gilligan's Island. That is a huge deal and I hope the cost savings for that difference in the recovery fleet should be glaringly obvious.

The point here too is that SpaceX is very close to having a full fledged spacecraft that can go up into space, maneuver around while up there, and safely bring cargo back down from orbit. Besides the Soyuz, Space Shuttle, and Shenzhou spacecraft, the Dragon will be the only one currently capable of doing that sort of mission profile. With the retirement of the Space Shuttle next year, the Dragon will be the only American spacecraft to be capable of doing this and it will also be only the second vehicle that you can put money onto the table to simply purchase a flight into space (after the Soyuz). Given the reluctance of the Russians to permit that kind of flight and the demand they have for at least two Russian cosmonauts to be involved, the Dragon offers an even more unique perspective for being able to bring stuff back home or to go up into space if you need a pressurized cargo capacity.

Yes, both Orbital Science and Boeing are in the process of building orbital spacecraft that will be capable of returning back to the Earth.... but at what stage in the development of those vehicles are they at? What is NASA working on for their own space-capable vehicle? Please don't tell me that the Ares I with the Orion capsule is going to be oh so much better.... if that is even going to be built at all.

The picture in that test is a bit ugly too, and I'd be glad that my life didn't depend upon the parachutes working. For those posters on this story that assert this was a "useless" test that didn't really prove anything, I hope that at least some of those would be pointed to this story to see what happens when a test of this nature goes wrong. I certainly wouldn't want to be in a capsule if the kind o

If my goal was to build the worlds fastest car would you be pissed at me building a car seat? It isn't exciting as a new engine or anything like that but they have to make one.

Also, their launch costs (listed on their site) to LEO are $2.3k/lb for cargo ($5.5k/lb to GTO). They aren't sending people up yet since their spacecraft isn't ready yet. And coincidentally this story is about them currently working on the dragon spacecraft (which is what they are sending people up in). So they ARE working on exactly what you want.....

Also, their launch costs (listed on their site) to LEO are $2.3k/lb for cargo ($5.5k/lb to GTO).

It's also worth noting that this is their launch price, not their cost. They actually expect to make a decent profit at this price, and Elon has stated that he plans on lowering the price further as he gets into mass production and successful reuse of rocket components.

I was alive during that time (well, technically - I was born less than 24 hours before Apollo 11 launched), and yeah, it is exciting. After the whole political bullshit from the post-Apollo years, it's good to see something actually moving forward again, even if it took folks other than NASA to do it.

"Retarded" is unquantifiable, but assuming suitable materials were found, the physics for a space elevator turn out to be rather easy to work out. Most of the work that's pushing towards space elevators right now is in materials development, something everyone benefits from. Exactly what is so bad about all of this?

As someone who wasn't alive during the Apollo years, it's pretty exciting for me to see a company that might actually make travel to space sustainable.

As someone who was alive during the Apollo years[and the Mercury and Gemini years], I agree wholeheartedly; it was, and still is exciting. [spacex.com] [I got the same goosebumps on launch, and was amazed at the vid quality and abundance!]

When I was a kid I followed every launch from Glenn onward, and I have to say it was kind of nostalgic to see a capsule hanging down from three chutes like that. I hope I can make it long enough to see Bigelow get his hotels started (I have no illusions of ever being able to go into space like I wanted to when I was a kid).

One thing that is certainly going to be different is the ability to have the miniature cameras in odd places that didn't exist before. I certainly liked the camera placed on the outside of the Dragon spacecraft that showed the whole splashdown from the perspective of a fly sitting on the outside of the capsule. Such a view perspective wasn't even possible during the Apollo era, where instead if they were lucky there was a U.S. Navy helicopter that had the one ton television camera in an otherwise stripped

It seems designed to hit feet first, a bit like gemini, rather than slapping directly into the water with the heat shield completely level. With the parachutes attached on the side of the hatch, heads would presumably be towards the hatch.

This ties in with the overall design of the Dragon capsule, which is designed to re-enter with a non-perpendicular angle of attack: presumably to provide some lift to allow some cross-range maneuvering, though it might also help the ergonomics inside the capsule. The heat shield and everything else is designed asymmetrically: presumably the parachutes are set up the same way.

I don't think we get the senate vote tonight unfortunately. I actually stuffed up voting below the line. I reached the end minus 1 (saving the last for Conroy) at 57, and found that I had voted 10 and 11 twice. 10 is easy to turn into 58, 11 becomes 59.

I am actually just a few K outside the seat of Melbourne. There is no hope, unfortunately, of Wills going to the greens.

I admit I stuffed up my first senate sheet too - it's too damn wide to fit into those cramped booths, and I missed an entire column due to it folding over onto itself. Had to get a fresh sheet and start over, which was a bit embarrassing.

SpaceX eventually wants to land this sucker on the ground instead of splashing down to save recovery costs. They will need retrorockets and landing gears to do this. I think the landing angle is designed to accommodate a future landing gear.

I take your point, but engineering businesses like SpaceX need to make the right technical decisions to be a commercial success. The best way to land a capsule on Earth may actually be a fully powered descent. You can save a lot of mass in the escape system by doing that.

Partial aerobrake with retro-rockets for the final touchdown are possible, but then you don't save anything.

Thats what I mean. What you save is the mass of a heavy launch escape system. The Apollo LES was huge because it had to lift the CM high enough for the parachutes to work. If you build in thrusters which can land the vehicle then they function as an LES as well as a landing system. It gives you more control over your landing site too.

Not sure it's a win. The weight of a launch escape system doesn't impact total system weight much since it is jettisoned shortly after launch. Thrusters and their fuel would be carried all the way to orbit, so their mass would come out of the payload.

You also want the launch escape system to carry you far out of the exploding fireball that may be a failed launch.

Not sure it's a win. The weight of a launch escape system doesn't impact total system weight much since it is jettisoned shortly after launch.

As an example, Apollo jettisoned its escape tower after Saturn V second-stage burnout. Which translates to nearly LEO, since most of the deltaV from the third stage was used for injection into the transfer orbit to the moon.

Since you pretty much have to dump the escape tower when none of the boosters are boosting, and Falcon 9 is only a two-stage rocket, you're goin

The SpaceX Dragon is going to carry its LES all of the way to orbit, although I think SpaceX is planning on using the propellant mass + rocket nozzles for maneuvering in orbit rather than as something for landing on the ground. Basically it gives them an extra safety margin for whatever it is that they plan on doing in space.

I'm not so sure how that is going to work, where the thrusters also can act as an emergency escape system too as the requirements seem to be a bit different, but that seems to be the c

Shuttle safety obviously IS age-related, both because the number of problems has magnified over time, and because materials technology has advanced since but the shuttle is still made out of the same old stuff.

A capsule is the most efficient way to get people back to earth. They are not reinventing the wheel... it never went away. The shuttle fanboys simply ignored the wheel for 40 years.

A reusable spaceplane whose main engines have to be rebuilt before every flight is not a reusable spaceplane, it's a reusable airframe. The Shuttle was and is a boondoggle.

What kinds of cargo need to be brought down from orbit? Besides passengers (where I hope the need to bring them back should be obvious) there are other kinds of space-based research that has tremendous usefulness if you can have a down link capability. Doing a biological experiment would be incredibly useful to bring it back to an Earth-based laboratory where you can poke and prod at whatever it is that you developed in space. Ditto for any metallurgy or materials science tests that you might be performi

Sure, I agree that research of all kinds of low-gravity experiments would be useful to bring back to earth. However, that's something that can be done on a small capsule, like the one they are testing right now, possibly using an unmanned configuration. So, far what they are doing right now, the SpaceX design seems pretty good, even though it looks like a step back.

As far as large scale manufacturing in low-gravity environment, I think that'll have to wait until somebody invents a radically different way to

Considering that the energy requirements for getting to orbit are actually a little bit easier than a flight from London to Sydney, I would say that there certainly is a whole bunch of room for engineers to come up with a more affordable way in terms of getting into space. Yes, I get that the airplane going to Australia from Europe can obtain "in-situ" oxidizer for the journey, but the capital layout costs for a 747 are certainly comparable to building a reusable spacecraft.

Considering that the energy requirements for getting to orbit are actually a little bit easier than a flight from London to Sydney

With a crucial difference that a flight from Londen to Sydney takes half a day, and a launch to LEO only a few minutes. This adds a bit of complexity to the systems. Also, the engineering margins on a rocket are going to be much smaller. Some materials are designed to be operated close to melting points, or breaking stresses. This is necessary, because something over-engineered will be too heavy to lift off. Running so close to the envelope requires much more careful design, testing, and manufacturing, whic

And you don't think that a trans-oceanic jet aircraft isn't flying at similar kinds of margins? Most of those passenger jets fly very close to the Coffin corner [wikipedia.org] in terms of the altitude, airspeed, and wing properties that requires an automated flight system to keep the pilot from killing everybody on board. Modern aviation pulls a whole bunch from rocket science including engines that also have to push the envelope in terms of temperatures and weight. If anything, I would argue that airliners have to be

"It's ooooooold" is relevant to fashion, but not so much to engineering. The shuttle was a blind alley that set us back thirty years and untold billions. It's time to get the space program back on track, and that means capsules.

Wheels are simple and they work. Cheap and good enough beats state of the art everytime.What SpaceX is trying to do is move away from expensive overly complicated launchers tosimpler more reliable less expensive ones.

we really need to be reinventing the shuttles as they are reusable, sustainable, and have much more cargo space.

Wrong on nearly all counts: yes, shuttles are (sort of) reusable, but they have a finite lifetime (a few dozen launches) and they require so much refurbishing that they might as well be rebuilt from scratch. Not quite sure how you measure sustainable, but refurbishing a shuttle costs more than building a Saturn V from scratch, so that's not exactly a win. And finally, a Saturn V can put over 100 tons into orbit; the shuttle can only put 19 tons in orbit.

I suppose we're going to repeat going back to the moon next as a grand finale.

The problem with Apollo 17 was the fact that it was a finale. NASA took some amazing hardware that could go places, and then simply threw it away like yesterday's garbage. There were a number of projects developed with the Apollo Applications Program [wikipedia.org] that I believe could have been flown at a sustainable rate with the funds that ended up going to the Space Shuttle.

Admittedly this is with 20/20 hindsight, but for the cost that NASA dumped into the Shuttle program, they could have flown more astronauts, put more tonnage into space (including the construction of something the size of the ISS) and perhaps even reduced the cost of access to space considerably had they simply stuck with the Apollo family of spacecraft over the past 40 years. Even now, all these years later, the Apollo hardware is looking very good and a very elegant design solution to a very tough engineering problem. Compared to the Soyuz spacecraft it still looks sleek, shiny, and modern.... but the Soyuz spacecraft are still flying and the Apollo spacecraft aren't.

The reason why a "splashdown" in the Pacific is being redone here is because it works. If the goal is to get into space and come home safely.... how else do you propose to get the job done? Are you sure that will be cheaper and be ready to fly by next year?

Clearly NASA could have done the same thing for a billion dollars, thereby creating much-needed high tech jobs for H-1b guest workers looking for a better life here in the US. I don't understand how anyone could celebrate this economic and humanitarian travesty.

Question for those in the know: is SpaceX leading a charmed life, or are they just incredibly good at managing their press lately? To hear the press release, this sounds like another home run for SpaceX.

SpaceX has been having a string of successes lately. Admittedly they've put in a great deal of effort to get to this point and SpaceX has had its share of failures too.... so don't presume that this string of successes is inevitable either.

One thing I will be saying about SpaceX is that their engineers have been doing their homework and trying desperately not to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. If there has been a rocketry related accident report or for that matter any post-mortem report about a